YouTube To Allow Video Rentals 215
poopdeville writes "Starting Friday, Google and YouTube will allow movie rentals. The first five films available to rent through YouTube will cost $3.99 for a 48-hour viewing period. Movie studios will be able to set their own prices, with rental viewing windows ranging from one to 90 days. YouTube will get an unspecified commission from each rental. Barclays Capital analyst Douglas Anmuch expects YouTube to generate about $700 million in revenue this year, an estimated 55 percent increase from 2009. If YouTube hits that target, it likely will turn profitable, helping to justify the $1.76 billion in stock that Google paid for the site more than three years ago."
Indie films. (Score:5, Interesting)
Hopefully, it won't be stifled by the big studios.
Europe? (Score:1, Interesting)
TFA doesn't say anything about where the service will be availible. Will I and my fellow Dutchmen be able to use it?
Re:$2-$5 ? (Score:2, Interesting)
The largest supermarket chain here rents most DVD's for $1.
Not everywhere. To rent a first run movie is about $8 AUD overnight for me, and I have to walk to the video library where it might be out. An older movie is $5 AUD for one week.
I'm sure that is correct. I'm also (reasonably) sure that this will only be available within the US.
Re:International Viewing? (Score:2, Interesting)
On "creativity needs funding" (Score:1, Interesting)
Add to that, the immorality of creating artificial scarcity to begin with, based on the false premise that creativity will somehow be stifled if we don't.
Making a two-hour film takes a significant amount of time out of many peoples' lives. Why would we expect people to do that if they're not paid?
Making music is (comparatively) cheap, and an easily accessible hobby. So is making software. Recording music can be done fairly easily because you don't need to pull that many people together, and you can pay your way out of not being a good recording technicians. The maintenance and evolution of software can be distributed (initial creation is more debatable).
Making films doesn't seem to have the same advantages that music and software does.
I'm not advocating any particular policy based off of these observations---I'm trying to say that if you expect people to create films for free, you may be disappointed at the volume and/or quality of output.
But let's say most copyrighted stuff makes most of its money in the first three(/five/ten) years after publication. Maybe that's a good argument for shortening the duration? And maybe different kinds of works should have different restrictions and durations, due to the economics of their creation?
Re:No thanks (Score:4, Interesting)
But those services that can be digitized, is normally cheaper online. Take my online bank for example, no fees whatsoever for doing things online. Do anything in a physical bank here in Norway these days? Expect a 1-5$ fee depending on what you're doing, and I'm not talking about any special service either. The iTunes store is much cheaper than retail CD stores. Online shops are in general much cheaper than retail sites, even if it's real goods sent by mail. The only reason pizza delivery costs extra is because they can't ship it out of a big server farm or warehouse, they must have people near you on duty on time to make it, which makes it cheaper to have everyone in the area come to you than you coming to everyone in the area. There's absolutely no reason an online movie store should cost more, except that the copyright holders got a monopoly on it and can set prices at will.
The real issue they have is that people overestimate how much distribution costs. Pressed CD/DVDs are cheaper pressed than burned, jewel/DVD cases cost very little in bulk and that printing press will print covers way cheaper than your home ink printer. What costs is shelf space in high-priced central retail shops, going with an online store the overhead is really quite low and the amount of unsold goods also much lower, unlike the retailer who sometimes have to do real bargain bin cleanouts that they have to take into their margins. Or maybe they underestimate how much a data file is, when it's not a tangible object. All the costs that went into production and marketing are already sunk costs, that 100,000$ scene doesn't become a 50,000$ scene just because you get it online rather than on a cheap plastic platter.
Quite frankly, I was hoping something like iTunes Plus would come for video (1080p/no DRM) or something like Spotify for music would take off, but so far the closest thing is Voddler which is nothing but a GPL-violating bandit shop (check their forums, and the comments on the allegedly "answered" questions) so I don't imagine there's much hope.
Re:No thanks (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, here in the UK that's not generally the case, unless you include the "10% off on collection" and similar offers you sometimes get - but then of course you can't use any other offer at the same time.
What you do tend to get is a minimum order price for delivery, but with the prices of the pizzas that's never been an issue for me.
I've never seen (in the UK) the "10% off for collection" negated by other deals, because it's not a "deal" as such, in the way that "Thursdays: 2 pizzas for the price of one". They knock 10% off because not delivering is a genuine saving for them.
What Americans don't understand is that for food delivery, the closest we'd typically come to tipping in Britain would be "keep the change" if the total was just below a round number.
Re:48 hours (Score:3, Interesting)
Depends how they do it. Sky let you rent or 'buy' [sky.com] episodes of House at £1.50 and £2 per pop respectively. That doesn't sound bad, and given that pretty much the only things me and the wife watch on Sky that we can't get on Freesat (free to air satellite) are House and Bones then it might work out cheaper than our Sky bill, even if we buy them.
The down side is that "buy" doesn't seem to be buy. It seems to be a still DRMed perpetual rental, so I'm getting the worst of buying (higher price and not replaced if I lose/delete/damage it) with the worst of renting (I could at any point get screwed over by the DRM crapping out or Sky's service disappearing, and I can't use it as I want).
Oh, and it seems to run on Silverlight as well and require Media Player 10, or something.
Is this US only? Like HULU and all those? (Score:3, Interesting)
And will they make it available to small indie movies too?
There are MANY movies I have wanted to see, but the distribution channels just don't exist.
One recent film festival (Fantastic Fest, Austin 2008 I think) allowed you to stream the movies being showcased at the festival from anywhere in the world. It was great. I saw some excellent documentaries I would never have had the chance to see otherwise.
(Like the very disturbing "I think we're alone now" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1152828/ [imdb.com] )
Re:No thanks (Score:3, Interesting)
Not if the tool delivering it dumped it on the side and is 20 minutes late. The delivery asshat get's ZERO tip.
I stopped getting pizza delivered because the delivery guys are usually idiots and nearly destroy the pizza. That and most pizza places sell their caller ID logs to telemarketers. Dominoes Pizza is proud in selling their caller ID logs and customer database to marketing firms.
Re:No thanks (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't feel that I must tip but I tend to tip rather well. I tip the grocery delivery person (in my area in the states, it is Peapod), the pizza guy, hair care professional, the person who makes my latte, as well as wait staff.
Although I get excellent service because they remember me and appreciate the tips, I think of it more as keeping my "charity" local. I make a very good living and know many people who worked service jobs. They work as hard for far less (usually a real salary not dependent on tips) as I do and an extra $10 in their pocket will be multiplied as they spend it with other local businesses.
Yes this is probably a phenomenon that is only prevalent in the states but I don't feel bad doing it.
Re:$2-$5 ? (Score:1, Interesting)
Now, will the option to rent in 720p and 1080p be available and for how much premium - that's a different question.
I doubt they'll do 1080p movies any time soon. Even with much higher compression you'll probably still be looking at 3-4gig per movie.
That would take quite a few hours to download and fill peoples bandwidth usage limits quite quickly.
As for a premium.. why? It shouldn't. its the same movie. It doesnt make a movie any better having more more pixels.
I'll tell you what I want as a service. (Score:5, Interesting)
I watch a lot of films, and I'm on a pretty tight budget, so it needs to really provide bang-per-buck for me to be satisfied. I'm actually on a pension for now, so not only is the budget really tight, but I have a huge amount of free time to try and fill each day and TV is not helping.
I've always been into alternative cinema far more than the mainstream films, but I tend to watch most things short of chick flicks and summer student films. I like my anime, Japanese horror, Korean cinema, and French films along with all kinds of other World Cinema - so my local store is never going to satisfy my desires.
At present I fan-sub what I can, pirate what I have to, purchase on DVD/Bluray as much as possible and every so often make a trip to the local cinema. Over time the divx's will be replaced with DVDs/Bluray or they end up deleted.
I divide films into several categories: see at the cinema, rent on dvd, buy it, download.
Putting aside the option to see it at the cinema there are three other ways that a single company could fulfill my purchasing needs.
On the day they release it to the rental places, they could also open up the opportunity for me to download a DRM copy that I can view at home for 2-3 days. The cost should be at least slightly cheaper than the rental stores because they have no overhead costs besides bandwidth.
On the day the DVDs hit the stores they should allow me the opportunity to download a copy with no DRM beyond that a normal DVD has - i.e. an ISO image I can burn to DVD and the covers so I can print both on the media and the slips for the box. Pirates working out the back of a shop in Chinatown can manage this, any decent company should be able to also.
The third way would be to make a DIVX/XVID copy available some time after release, and I really can't see them doing this or even being able to compete with the warez group - it doesn't make sense - so there are really just two ways to capitolise on me.
Now here's what grinds my gears. If I go to the cinema, or rent a DVD from the shop prior to buying, I still pay full price for the DVD. There is in fact almost no incentive for me to ever rent a DVD since they release for purchase soon enough after. The same applies to a cinema version - and with electronic ticketing and digital projectors there seems little reason not to propose this...if I paid you a whack of cash to see it at the cinema I should get a rebate on purchasing it to own.
Currently I might end up purchasing the "rights to view" a product three separate times. First it costs $22 AUS to view at the cinema, then $6 AUS to rent, then $30 AUS to buy to own. So on a really good title I have to pay a total of $58 AUS to see it at first release, then first home release, before finally buying to enjoy for the next few years.
So, what I want is this: Digital Rights Management - where I actually get "rights" and they are managed.
I want someone to whack up a pile of huge servers somewhere with plenty of bandwidth. When I pay my $22 for my cinema ticket I want that logged to my account and for them to offer me a modest discount on purchasing / renting the film in the future. When it's released to rental market I want that same site to let me know, and allow me to download the film. After I've seen the film I'd like to be able to indicate I want to purchase it on mainstream release, and get a decent sized discount on that. I'm a valued repeat customer, they should treat me like one and work hard to continue to do business with me. If for any reason whatsoever I lose a copy of a film I should be able to download it again at no cost. If a new print of the film comes out I should get access to this at minimal cost - why pay another $40 to buy the film again on Bluray when I already have a licence to watch it, and just want to see it in an improved bitrate/codec.
Currently I have to rent a film, just to see if it's even worth one watch, let alone the five or so watches that are required to break even on the cost of perhaps buying i